Even on days he is condemned to shake
off dusty death and rise again to make
another roadside cameo before a
white-line-wired rigger highballing Peoria,
or a spectral reflection in the Tulsa window-
shopping reverie of a football widow,
even then, in those moments he is risen
under the sun, his soul remains imprisoned
in a velvet painting in El Paso,
a sequined T-shirt in a Boardwalk casino,
a Nashville plaster coin bank statuette.
These haunts new and old render no release
for a U.S. male of the old stamp from the net
of impersonators, harpies of regret
drawling old songs that scald like bacon grease;
offer no freedom, sweet and redeeming,
like in those golden olden hound dog days
on the flat-bed stages of state fair midways,
girls in cotton dresses crying and screaming
as the music just erupted from within
like gospel grace pouring down from heaven.
No more: the ghost gig is mere dumb show
and stygian nights flash neon agony.
For he is not the hot act Down Below.
The King is dead; no headliner, he,
in sold-out rooms on the infernal Strip;
just a has-been warm-up for the big marquee,
the grinning boss of Mephistopheles,
who sets ‘em howling with a quivering lip and a quip:
Take my dignity... Please!
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem